https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVhuGCVIf3g

GOP ‘trackers’ stalk Dems in hunt for ‘macaca’ moment [McClatchy]

Ten miles from where we write, Robin Long sits in a brig at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station. He pleaded guilty last August to desertion from the Army, and is serving a 15-month sentence.

Long is the first war resister deported from Canada since Vietnam. He enlisted in the Army in 2003, with what he thought was an assurance from his recruiter that he would not be sent to Iraq. When the Army ordered him to Iraq anyway in 2005, he fled the country. Long had been vocal about his objections to the war, and he was the only soldier deployed from his “nondeployable” unit.

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We used to be one of Them. “Deranged idiots”, UCLA’s Gene Bartow called us, which we immediately reified for personal use. Front row, McArthur Court, Eugene, Oregon. The Pit.

We were crazy, but we were polite. “Siddown, Gene!” we would chant when the opposing coach stood up. And when Gene sat down, one of us, who today produces wan fratboy humor for an upstart politics blog, shouted “Thank you!” That was immediately incorporated into the chant, and we were impressed with our awesome power to move masses. World revolution followed.

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Title: Chariots of the Gods

Author: Erich von Daniken

Rank: 61

Blurb: “Includes remarkable photos that document mankind’s first contact with aliens at the dawn of civilization.”

Review: “By turning the gods into mysterious and high-tech aliens, Däniken makes it possible for modern man to re-enchant the world, while still being firmly rooted in the space age.”

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We’ll admit we’re cutting Barry some slack right now. He’s following the most destructive Administration in American history, he’s reasonably cautious, and frankly the wingnuts are far more amusing at the moment.

But just for practice, we thought we’d take a nibble at Friday afternoon’s announcement that the term “enemy combatant” has been dropped from the official lexicon. Hurrah, we’re supposed to think, one of the Bush abuses has been tossed aside:

Rather than relying on the president’s authority as commander-in-chief, the department explained, the new standard “draws on the international laws of war to inform the statutory authority conferred by Congress.”

Thus TPM, whose judgment we usually trust, celebrates the announcement as a “historic gesture”. But note that “statutory authority” — it’s the September 2001 “Authorization for the Use of Military Force” (AUMF), which was ostensibly directed towards the perpetrators of 9/11. That’s the legislation that politicized a crime, that created a “war” when an FBI manhunt would have been more effective. If you want to date the birth of the Bush Tyranny, that’s as good a place as any.

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Let’s start with the science. The bone in boner happens when the spongy tissue in Mr. Happy fills with blood. Under the hood, nitric oxide is relaxing the walls of the arteries that engorge your old feller, allowing more blood to flow in. But John Thomas goes limp in the presence of an evil enzyme or Ann Coulter, either of which seize up your arteries by destroying the heroic nitric oxide.

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[ Comedy Central Flash video not available. ]

The complete unedited Daily Show interview: Part I (5:47)

We don’t produce a comedy show at night, so we don’t bother watching cable news during the day. Neither do most Americans — we’re a generation beyond the era when three broadcast networks controlled the national conversation.

We’re also a generation beyond the era when television news took itself seriously, when Network was over-the-top satire, when Doonesbury mocked Roone Arledge for turning ABC into “Wide World of News”. How silly we all were, thinking news could be about something other than ratings and advertising.

Which is part of what makes Jon Stewart interesting. Where we’ve long since given up caring, he still holds television news to standards long since abandoned, back when Beethoven’s Ninth introduced The Huntley-Brinkley Report, and not Countdown.

What’s more, he’s effective. Or at the very least, an early sign of change on the horizon.

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